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How do I backup my OneDrive folders onto a second hard drive?

Anonymous
2023-06-15T23:21:54+00:00

I have been using Backup and Restore (Windows 7) thinking it was backing up all my files. Then I went to look at my backed up files and I found out nothing is being backed up because they are all in OneDrive folders and, even though I have all my OneDrive files and folders permanentally in my computer, Backup and Restore does not backup from (nor restore to) the OneDrive folder and subfolders. Why!?

Is there some way to change that, and if not, what alternative to Backup and Restore do I need in order to backup OneDrive onto a second hard drive weekly?

Or would it be better to find an alternative to OneDrive and then use Backup and Restore?

Or just find alternatives to both???

I'm just trying to follow the 3-2-1 rule: "Save 3 copies of your important data on 2 different formats with 1 of those backups saved off site." Does Microsoft offer any way of following this very common rule???

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Brian Tillman 24,955 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2023-06-16T13:27:18+00:00

    If you want to back up the OneDrive folder of each account on the computer, unless they've been deliberately moved elsewhere you can find them under C:\Users<accountname>\OneDrive. Create a folder for each user on the secondary drive and then copy their respective OneDrive folders there under a folder indicating which is which, like D:\OneDriveBackup\User1, ...User2... etc. There is also a free tool that Microsoft used to offer called SyncToy that would copy one folder to another (you can still find it with a web search) or you can use a built-in command line tool called robocopy and you can create a batch file that will use robocopy to copy the OneDrive folders all at once. This is fairly easy to create and I've used robocopy for duplicating folders between drives.

    As for paid backup tools, there are many that are free, like the AOMEI Backupper tool I mentioned. There's also Macrium Reflect Free and others as well.

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  1. Brian Tillman 24,955 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2023-06-17T02:55:36+00:00

    Well, I hope you find an approach that works for you.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-06-17T01:28:19+00:00

    Thank you! I will look into those options.

    Yes I know where the user folders are. I would need to take over control over other users' folders to copy them myself.

    I will look at SyncToy and robocopy. I've written a few batch files over the decades, so I think this robocopy should be possible.

    As far as I can tell AOMEI Backerupper will only backup the entire drive. I've also had trouble getting the backup restored with AOMEI especially when I need to open the copied drive on an entirely different computer.

    Right now I'm trying the File History feature to see if that's what I'm after. I do have to set it up in each account, however. But I'm reading something that might let me manually execute a File History backup for all accounts whenever I connect the hard drive I'm want to use for backups. It also keeps other older backups until the drive is full, at least that's what I understand. But still, I'm not sure if this will be as easy as "connect drive, start app and voilà!"

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-06-16T04:04:52+00:00

    Thanks!

    Copying and pasting doesn't appeal to me since there is more than one account on the computer (each with its own OneDrive account) and I'd like to back up all of them.

    It doesn't have to be automated since I manually connect the second hard drive and then disconnect it after the backup so as to reduce the chances of losing the data in all three areas (main SSD, backup HDD and in the cloud) if there were a randsomeware attack or something similar.

    I guess I better look at backup tools that I have to purchase. I liked the Backup and Restore on Windows because it allows you to view your backed up files and can store several backups over time and automatically delete older backups when the HDD gets full.

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  4. Brian Tillman 24,955 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2023-06-16T01:06:01+00:00

    Hi. I'm Brian and I will do my best to help you.

    Your OneDrive folders are located both online and in the cloud. If you want to back them up to another drive, just copy the OneDrive folder to the other drive. This should copy the local OneDrive folders to that second drive. It's also the quickest way because the copying is local to your computer.

    If you want to automate this, look into using a backup tool like AOMEI Backupper.

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